Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Eustace Hyde was the third and youngest son of Tom Dodsworth Hyde, a Church of England clergyman originally from Durham, and Mary Jane Croft, the daughter of a Bradford banker. The couple had five children, of whom Eustace was the fourth. He was born in Dudley Hill, Bradford on 27th April 1892, and he subsequently lived with his parents, brothers and sisters at Whitechapel Vicarage. All three brothers attended Bradford Grammar School. Edward, the eldest and academically most successful, went on to study Classics at Jesus College, Oxford, and would later follow his father into the Church of England. Charles spent only two years at
the School before becoming a bank clerk. Eustace was there for five years. In his final year in Fourth Classical, he came first in Science, 7th in Divinity and 8th in History. Seven out of twenty-five in this form would die in the War. He left when he was sixteen to become apprenticed to the Hunsworth works of the Bradford Dyers Association, a cartel
which controlled ninety percent of the district’s dyeing business. By the time he was in his early twenties he had a managerial position.
When war broke out in 1914, Edward was a Territorial in the Royal Garrison Artillery and was
sent to Egypt in 1915; Charles enlisted in the Leeds Pals in September; while on the 11th Eustace joined the 1st Bradford Pals. Charles was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Bradford Pals at the end of April 1915. However, he was not to serve with Eustace who had already been commissioned into the 4th Royal Irish Fusiliers, a regiment known as the ‘Faugh-A-Ballaghs’. The 4th Battalion was a training unit stationed at Carrickfergus in Ireland
when Eustace arrived, and he was appointed Musketry Instructor with responsibility for training in handling the rifle. In March 1916 he was promoted to Lieutenant, shortly before his battalion was sent to Dublin to help suppress the republican Easter Rising. On 1st July his brother Charles was killed on the opening day of the Somme offensive, and a week later Eustace landed in France having been posted to the 1st Battalion. Although 1st Royal Irish
Fusiliers had not suffered heavily on 1st July, other battalions in VIII Corps had so when Hyde joined them they occupied a quieter sector of the line at Ypres. In late September they returned to the Somme to train for the attempt to take the Transloy Ridges in October.
On 9th October they moved into the heavily cratered area near Lesboeufs where trenches were no more than ditches with no shelters, and heavy losses were inflicted by shell-fire. On the 11th orders were received to attack the next day and the night was spent moving into position. The battalion was down to 460 men, so the 10% normally left out of action were
called up. The Battalion War Diary’s detailed account reveals how both sides’ tactics had evolved. The British guns opened up at 2.05 pm; the Irish Fusiliers ‘left their trenches in great style’ and pursued the now standard creeping barrage ‘almost too close’ so that some men were hit, which was preferable to hanging back and losing its protection. The Germans had
learned to position machine guns further back and they fired through the creeping barrage, while a machine gun in a crater in front of the German line survived the barrage and opened up a deadly enfilade fire. The leading waves paused, allowing the Germans time to mount their machine guns in the front line and ’the Regiment had no chance at all.’ Hyde was one of six officers killed, his body left on the German parapet as the survivors fell back. His C.O. wrote: ‘Your son had only been with us a short time, but had already more than proved his worth as a magnificent officer and as a comrade.’ Hyde’s body was buried, then re-interred after the war in the A.I.F. Burial Ground, Flers. His grave reads: ‘Also in loving memory of 2nd Lieutenant Charles Stewart Hyde, 16th West Yorkshire Regiment, fell in action near Serre on 1 July 1916, age 25.’'